The Zen Leaf

Reconstructing Amelia, by Kimberly McCreight

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Thistle

Kate is a 38-year-old single mother of 15-year-old Amelia. They live in NYC, and Amelia attends a prestigious private school. Kate is a lawyer and works long hours, but tries to make time to stay with Amelia as often as she can. She’s noticed that her daughter’s behavior has become a bit erratic, but nothing too alarming. So, when she’s told by the school that Amelia cheated in English class and is being suspended, she’s shocked. She’s even more shocked when, by the time she arrives at the school to get her daughter, Amelia has thrown herself off the school roof and is now dead.

This is one of those books that I knew, from the beginning, I really ought to just return to the library, but I kept going anyway. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t written in a way I particularly liked – the little interludes of text messages and blog entries and facebook updates were especially grating for me. I should have sympathized with Kate, but felt no connection with her at all. I felt more connection with Amelia, who sounded far older than her fifteen years. Then there were the Maggies, who just felt…silly, and turned the book into a Cruel Intentions kind of boarding school psychotic story. Meh.

Honestly, the only reason I kept reading is because I wanted to know the full story. I should have flipped through to get the answers, the same way I did with the last book I abandoned halfway through (Pawn**). This one just didn’t do anything for me. I finished this five days ago, and I had to look up Kate’s name. Just didn’t remember. I don’t remember anyone else’s either, except Amelia and her fake-text-friend Ben. I doubt I’ll remember anyone’s name but Amelia’s (and hers only because it was in the title) by the end of the year.

Only interesting thing to come out of this book was I learned about Waardenburg Syndrome, which with my sister’s eyes and my cousin’s skin, I believe must run in our family.

Still, the book wasn’t terrible. Just not particularly great for me, either. Others seem to like it a lot.

**Note from September 2014: I have no idea what book I was talking about here…

Posted in 2014, Adult, Prose | 1 Comment

A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Thistle

Winter is coming.

I won’t even try to describe the plot behind the first book in this series by George R.R. Martin. I’m sure by now everyone knows what it is anyway, given that it’s a major television series (which I have yet to watch, incidentally). I’ve had people telling me I should read this book since the show started years ago, and at the time, I vehemently objected to both reading the books and watching the show. My objections were based on two things. First, I didn’t really like fantasy novels, and second, I was worried they would be too violent/gritty for me.

Oh, how times change. Fast forward a couple years, and Ms. Manda has found herself very much in love with fantasy novels (thank you, Brandon Sanderson!). Jason, thus, bought me a pack of the first four books in the series back in December, thinking they might make good books for me. I was still leery, I admit, but when I started reading A Game of Thrones in January, I was immediately hooked.

It’s funny, because in the end, the violence and grit didn’t turn me off. I think they were both tastefully handled. This is a grim world, no doubt, but I never felt like the violence was gratuitous, or that the book was some sort of torture-p*rn. In the end, the part I found most difficult in this book was the focus on politics. I’ve never really been a lover of politics and political science, and there were parts that were so well-written in this book, with regards to politics, that I struggled to get through them. Some days I would only read a chapter or two before I had to put the book aside for the rest of the day.

Regardless, I never wanted to stop reading, or to move on to a different book. As soon as I was through those more tedious chapters, I loved them, and was excited about the things I’d read. That, I think, is a real gift – very few authors can make me excited about subjects I really dislike, but Martin did just that. And I didn’t mind reading the book slowly. I read it over several weeks, and during that time, I thought about the story a lot, and learned many things about world-building and constructing a political and war-torn society. The story stayed in my head so well that many nights I dreamed about it. I have not yet started the second book, because I want to give the first book time to settle in my brain. A Game of Thrones is the first book I’ve read since Shadow and Bone in December 2012 that I felt was truly going to stick in my brain longterm, and that felt wonderful.

I won’t say the book is perfect. The one thing that did bother me was how black-and-white the story seemed in places. From the beginning, we are clearly supposed to support the Starks and shun the Lannisters, and I would have loved to see more from the Lannister point of view, to understand them more. However, I’ve been told by several people who’ve read the entire series (thus far) that this particular issue of mine gets addressed and resolved further on, and that nothing is so black and white after a few more books. So that’s good! I’m looking forward to reading further. And to watching the HBO series now, because yeah, I just have to.

Posted in 2014, Adult, Prose | Tagged dream-invader, speculative | 4 Comments

Protected: The Diviners, by Libba Bray

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Thistle

Posted in 2014, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged historical, RIP-worthy, speculative, tarot | Enter your password to view comments.

The School for Good and Evil, by Soman Chainani

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Thistle

First book of the new year!

Spoilers.

The School for Good and Evil is a long, intricate fairy tale about two girls, Sophie and Agatha, who are kidnapped from their small town of Gavaldon and taken to a school for fairy tales. Every four years, another pair of children are kidnapped, and this year, Sophie is determined to be one of them. She is beautiful and vain, goes out of her way to rack up good deeds, and believes she will be a princess sent to the School of Good. Agatha, a charity friend of hers, lives in a graveyard, hates her reflection, and doesn’t believe in the School at all. Once they are kidnapped, though, everything goes wrong, with Agatha delivered to Good, and Sophie delivered to Evil.

The book had an interesting concept, and I liked the way it played out. I wasn’t sure at first. Sophie was obviously Evil from the beginning. All her good deeds were selfish, and she was too self-centered to be truly good. Agatha was clearly Good despite her avoidance of people and her bad looks and her scary reputation. All during their kidnapping, her motive is to rescue Sophie, period. That’s not to say she’s without selfishness – she DOES want to go home – but for the most part, Agatha is Good, and Sophie is Evil. Selfishness vs selflessness, wrapped in a disguise of beauty vs ugliness.

When I really started to find this book interesting was when Sophie caved in on herself. She loses everything she loves – though in reality, she only loves those things shallowly, because all she truly loves is herself – and begins to embrace evil. That’s when she became an interesting character, rather than a caricature, and when I started to care about her. Agatha, on the other hand, begins slightly shallow in development, quickly grows into an interesting person, and then starts to lose that interest as Sophie develops. This may or may not have been done on purpose: One of the big things the girls are taught in the book is that a nemesis grows stronger or weaker in contrast to themselves.

I liked the way the climax played out, and the fact that in the end, everyone is both good and evil, no one is really one thing. I liked that the Evil kids wanted to be accepted, and that the Good kids had to learn to be less shallow. By the end, all the kids grew from flat, two-dimensional fairy tale fodder into round characters with depth and dimension. That was fantastic.

There were only two things that I really had a problem with, and made this a less than perfect reading experience. The first is the beginning. I have a really hard time buying Agatha and Sophie’s friendship, and it doesn’t seem particularly well thought out as the book begins. The books seems to flounder for quite a bit, with inconsistencies in characters’ personalities, that sort of thing. The second is the ending, where Sophie comes back to life so that she and Agatha can magically transport back home. Before Sophie’s return, there’s this perfect storybook ending:

Bloodied students turned in stunned silence to see their rotted, malevolent leader, frozen over the body of the witch who saved a princess’s life. The body of one of their own.

And then, on the next page:

“You’re not Evil, Sophie,” Agatha whispered, touching her decayed cheek. “You’re human.”

Sophie, witch and savior, should have died. Instead, she comes back to life at Agatha’s kiss, and the two leave the fairy tale world behind. And…I just don’t buy it. They were never that great of friends to begin with, and Sophie betrays Agatha again and again, up until the moment when she saves her. Every single thing she does is selfish prior to that very last moment. Should Sophie be redeemed then? I think so, yes, but I think that in bringing her back to life, she will only have the opportunity to destroy that redemption. Sometimes, death is a beautiful thing, a powerful and necessary thing, and it made me sad that Chainani denied it here. Perhaps it was because this was a children’s book, or perhaps it was meant to be irony, but either way, it ruined the ending for me, and made The School of Good and Evil a good book, rather than a great one.

Posted in 2014, Children's, Prose | Tagged speculative | Leave a comment

2013 in Books

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Thistle

Well, another year has come and gone. I admit, it wasn’t a great year for reading. Actually, since I began keeping track of books in 2008, it’s been my worst year in reading. I’ve had other really bad years – 2010 comes to mind – but there’s one big difference between then and now. In 2010, I had lots of really, really terrible books on my list, but a few really fantastic ones, too. This year, I’ve had very few really terrible books, but absolutely no great books that weren’t rereads. Not a single so-fantastic-it-bested-my-list books. Every single one of my “best of” list this year is a reread. Sigh.

So let me start this end-of-year summary with The Perpetual Time Turner’s survey again this year. Survey first, then I’m skipping my Best Of Books section (since they’re all rereads this year), then my stats for the year. Here goes:

Note: As I fill out this survey, I will not include rereads in any of my answers unless specifically noted.

1. Best Book You Read In 2013? (If you have to cheat — you can break it down by genre if you want or 2013 release vs. backlist)
Sadly, all my best books this year were rereads of old favorites – Shadow and Bone, Jane Eyre, The Night Circus, Mistborn: The Final Empire, Howl’s Moving Castle, The Bell Jar…etc. Other than rereads, however, I don’t really know if I had a “favorite” book. These are the contenders, though, for second-best:

– City of Dark Magic: This one wasn’t perfect, but it was fun, it taught me a lot about certain types of writing, and I loved it enough to both reread and buy. It’s one of the very few books of the year that actually stuck with me all year.

– The Golem and the Jinni: Amazingly well-written book, poignant and beautiful. The only reason this doesn’t make the best-of-best list is because despite its amazingness, it didn’t really stick in my head and make me ponder it for months on end.

– Steelheart: A fantastic book by Brandon Sanderson, but like The Golem and the Jinni, it didn’t really stick.

– Les Miserables: I was surprised how much I loved this one, but it did have a tendency towards boring in a few places, so it won’t go on the love-it-forever list.

– Siege and Storm: Not quite as good as Shadow and Bone, and it had some pacing problems and some other issues (like lack of Darkling), but still fairly good and definitely one of the top five non-rereads.

2. Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t?
The Madness Underneath (just got weird and not so great…) and The Rithmatist (felt more middle grade than YA)

3. Most surprising (in a good way!) book of 2013?
Les Miserables. I expected to hate every moment of that book and didn’t know if I’d make it through, but besides a few politics-oriented bits, I actually really enjoyed it.

4. Book you read in 2013 that you recommended to people most in 2013?
I almost wish I could say I read Shadow and Bone in January, because that would definitely be it, but I read it the last week of December 2012…hmm. I don’t believe there is any book I read in 2013 that I particularly recommended. When people mentioned City of Dark Magic and The Golem and the Jinni, I did say “Yeah those were good,” but I didn’t go out of my way to recommend them, either.

5. Best series you discovered in 2013?
Well, I didn’t really read any completely fantastic series this year, but the Soulless series was pretty fun.

6. Favorite new author you discovered in 2013?
I read a lot of books by authors I already knew this year, so I didn’t discover too many people. I really liked both books I read by Magnus Flyte, so maybe that counts?

7. Best book that was out of your comfort zone or was a new genre for you?
I didn’t read a lot of books out of my comfort zone this year, but I would say it’s probably a tie between The Chopin Manuscript (thriller) and The Cuckoo’s Calling (detective).

8. Most thrilling, unputdownable book in 2013?
It’s a reread, but The Night Circus tops this category in 2013. I meant to read it to my kids, but after a couple chapters, I couldn’t stop until I was done. And this was my third year in a row reading it!

9. Book You Read In 2013 That You Are Most Likely To Re-Read Next Year?
Siege and Storm. I think that’s the only non-reread book of this year I can imagine rereading.

10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2013?

11. Most memorable character in 2013?
Sturmhond.

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2013?
The Golem and the Jinni.

13. Book that had the greatest impact on you in 2013?
I’m not sure any book really had a great impact on me, but I do know MWF Seeking BFF has stuck with me and made me think a lot about friendship.

14. Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2013 to finally read?
Les Miserables. I was so afraid of this book and I really shouldn’t have been!

15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2013?
Skipping this question – I never remember quotes!

16. Shortest & Longest Book You Read In 2013?
Longest Book: Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (643 pgs)
Shortest Book: Kid Cyclone Fights the Devil by Xavier Garza (87 pages)
Longest Audio: Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (60 hrs)
Shortest Audio: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (4 hrs)

17. Book That Had A Scene In It That Had You Reeling And Dying To Talk To Somebody About It? (a WTF moment, an epic revelation, a steamy kiss, etc. etc.) Be careful of spoilers!
The Uninvited was pretty much nothing but WTF moments…then there was the Big Reveal in We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves…and of course, all the sex scenes in City of Dark Magic were delicious!

18. Favorite Relationship From A Book You Read In 2013 (be it romantic, friendship, etc).
Friendship/love – Sturmhond and Alina, or the Golem and the Jinni. Sexy – Sarah and Max from City of Dark Magic.

19. Favorite Book You Read in 2013 From An Author You’ve Read Previously
Hmm, probably Steelheart, or Broken Harbor, or Scarlet.

20. Best Book You Read In 2013 That You Read Based SOLELY On A Recommendation From Somebody Else:
Probably either MWF Seeking BFF (recommended by Jill) or Anansi Boys (recommended by Karen)

21. Genre You Read The Most From in 2013?
Fantasy.

22. Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2013?
Hmm, difficult. I didn’t really have any new crushes this year. If I had to choose one, it’s probably Sturmhond – though I still like the Darkling more!

23. Best 2013 debut you read?
City of Dark Magic.

24. Most vivid world/imagery in a book you read in 2013?
The boat-house neighborhood from He’s Gone, and the old run-down half-built town of Broken Harbor.

25. Book That Was The Most Fun To Read in 2013?
Siege and Storm, and The Rithmatist – because Jason and I read both of those two aloud to the boys.

26. Book That Made You Cry Or Nearly Cry in 2013?
Never got close to crying at a book in 2013…sad!

27. Book You Read in 2013 That You Think Got Overlooked This Year Or When It Came Out?
Not sure. I do think more people should read Leigh Bardugo’s books though. 😀

1. One Book You Didn’t Get To In 2013 But Will Be Your Number 1 Priority in 2014?
I have absolutely no books waiting on me to read in 2014.

2. Book You Are Most Anticipating For 2014 (non-debut)?
Oh gosh. I have a ton of books I am anticipating, all sequels or new books by authors I love! Most anticipating, though, has got to be Ruin and Rising!!!

3. 2014 Debut You Are Most Anticipating?
I actually don’t know any 2014 debuts…

4. Series Ending You Are Most Anticipating in 2014?
Several! The end of the Grisha series, obviously, and then the end of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy, and the end of the Mara Dyer series, and hopefully the end of the Shades of London series…

5. One Thing You Hope To Accomplish Or Do In Your Reading/Blogging In 2014?
I would love love love to have more FANTASTIC books, and fewer just meh, barely-remember sorts of books. I’m also hoping to keep my reading under 52 books in the upcoming year.

So…I’m skipping my Best Of Books section this year, because everything on it is a reread, and instead, will leave this post with my book stats of the year:

Total books: 75
New reads: 67
Rereads: 8

Yeah. I didn’t reread a lot, but the good thing is that of my eight rereads, I loved seven of them!

Novels/Novellas: 62
–Speculative: 43
–Realistic: 19
Nonfiction: 12
Collections/Anthologies: 1
Plays: 0
Poetry: 0

Ha. I’m not even sure it’s worth having the collections, plays, and poetry section up there…the nonfiction percentage is quite high this year, though – 16%.

Text/E-text: 54
Graphic/Photo/Art: 1
Audio: 20

Same thing – a graphic/art section is barely worth it anymore! Love that my audio was nearly a third of this year’s reading! Higher than in any previous year!

Classics: 6
Contemporary: 69

Just wasn’t in a classics mood this year. Second year in a row, actually.

Adult: 44
YA: 27
Children’s: 4

Yep, this is about standard now…

By men: 24
By women: 50
By both: 1

I really have started to read a lot more women over the last few years. I’m okay with that.

Chunksters (450+ pages): 10
In translation: 5
Languages: French (2), Middle English (1), Spanish (2)

Hmm. My chunksters went down by half this year, despite reading a lot more fantasy. Interesting. My translations have stayed about the same since I stopped forcing myself to read books to hit a specific quota.

Most read authors: Gail Carriger (5), Brandon Sanderson (4) – I read no other authors more than twice this year. This is the first year since 2005 that I haven’t read the Harry Potter series.

Best Book-related Discovery: Well, my answer this year is a bit hard. I didn’t really learn or discover anything wonderful this year. However, I do think I have a good book-related discovery: Reading good-enough books just doesn’t cut it! I read plenty of okay books this year, books that were “good enough” to keep reading, but just didn’t make an impression on me in the end. I didn’t give them up, because there was no point of giving them up – they were good. They just weren’t great. And you know, this is fine…sometimes. But nearly every book I read this year was just okay. Good enough, but not particularly memorable. As I look back over the 75 books I read this year, discounting the rereads, very few stand out. I barely remember the rest. Part of that might be my mindframe this year, but part of it is also that I just kept reading books that were good enough to keep reading, but not really demanding my time and attention. And I don’t see a point to continuing to read in that vein. For the last few years, I’ve stopped forcing myself to read to fit specific goals, and have just read haphazardly. I thought I’d be happier that way, and certainly, I’m less stressed. But I think the big thing I learned this year is that I don’t always feel like reading, and it’s okay to go long periods of time reading nothing, instead of grabbing what’s sitting around and “good enough” just to have something to read. In 2014, I definitely want to be better at giving up books that aren’t really doing anything for me, even if they are “good enough.”

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged end of year | 1 Comment

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath (audio)

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Thistle

This is the third or fourth time I’ve experienced The Bell Jar, though the first time on audio. I don’t normally listen to rereads on audio if I already have a strong attachment to the book, but Jason said Maggie Gyllenhaal did a fantastic job reading this one and added a new element to the story layering, and so I decided to give it a go.

Wow. Amazing. The performance was absolutely stunning!

In the book, Esther starts as a naive young woman trying to make it in the world. She is only kind of confident, trying to be cool when she’s really just young and inexperienced. She sinks slowly into depression, until she no longer sounds naive, but flat and lifeless and wise well beyond her years, as if she’s now experienced things that would give her an entirely new outlook. Then, eventually, she rises up from the depression.

Those same things come across in the audio, but even more subtly than in the book. Gyllenhaal’s voice is young and naive and perfect for Esther. She was obviously performing this first-person-narrator character, rather than just reading. When I first read The Bell Jar, I did feel Esther was naive, but naive in a learned way (as odd as that seems), naive in a way that prepared her to see things and not be surprised – a lot the way I felt about myself in 1999 when I read it. I felt her depression steal over her long before it does – but in the audiobook, while the signs of depression are there, the outward presentation of Esther’s voice remains light, young, naive, childish. It’s only when Esther announces that she hasn’t showered in three weeks, because she doesn’t see the point of showering every day for the rest of her life, that the full force of depression hits.

It’s subtle. Gyllenhaal’s voice doesn’t change, but the way she says things – inflections at the ends of sentences, the speed at which she speaks – changes just slightly, to make the words flatter, duller, turned inward. It’s as if Esther is playing with depression, in the first part, as if she’s entranced by it, but has no idea the danger it really poses. It’s brilliantly done, and the journey outwards – beginning after the insulin reaction – is the same way. There are small changes in the text – Esther starting to include herself as part of a group of other people, in her language, thinking of herself as “a woman” or “a college student” rather than a lone person who belongs to no group – and there were the same changes back out of the flatness in the performance. However, the performance doesn’t return to the original naivety, but to a new set of nuances and speech patterns altogether. Esther emerges almost like her former self – but older, transformed, wary, less naive.

The book is, of course, brilliant, and Plath does an amazing job bringing Esther through this journey and back again. It’s obvious that she went through this herself, and knows exactly what it feels like. If not for the brilliant text, the audio performance could never have been so great. But at the same time, another reader could have read that book aloud, and while the book may still have been brilliant, there would have been no extra life brought to Esther’s character. Gyllenhaal turned that book into something MORE, gave it more depth, more character, more life. It was phenomenal.

Posted in 2013, Adult, Prose | Tagged audio, classics, favorite, gender studies, memorable, portentous, psychology, reread, shredded me | 1 Comment

Protected: Untold, by Sarah Rees Brennan

Posted on December 14, 2013 by Thistle

Posted in 2013, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged speculative | Enter your password to view comments.

Protected: Born of Illusion, by Teri Brown

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Thistle

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Oddly Normal, by John Schwartz (audio)

Posted on December 3, 2013 by Thistle

Subtitled: One Family’s Struggle to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms with His Sexuality.

This is a memoir about the author’s gay son, his suicide attempt at age thirteen, and the general troubles that gay people – especially gay children – meet in our current society.

So…there was nothing new in this book. It was all stuff I’d heard before, all politics that I’m very familiar with. However, despite it being nothing new, it was really good material, fairly put together without a strong political bent. The topics were discussed fairly and in a reasonable manner. Beyond that, the politics were softened by more personal issues, as the book flipped back and forth between the general and the specific.

I enjoyed the book, even if I don’t feel I really learned anything from it. The only thing that saddens me is that I believe it will continue to perpetuate gay stereotypes. Being a gay man does not mean that you love purple, play with Barbies, and dress “fabulously.” It just doesn’t. And it bothers me that this seems to be an inherent bias in our culture. Being a gay man does not mean you have to try to fit into a culturally female norm. I don’t even like the cultural norms for straight people! People are just people, and their stereotypical and cultural norms differ from society to society. What might seem “gay” here might be normal somewhere else, and I fear that too often, we overlook this problem.

I don’t think the parents in this book assumed their son was gay from an early age just because he played with Barbies and didn’t like sports, but I do think that was a major factor in their thoughts. And I think this automatic assumption influences a child’s thoughts about his or her own sexuality – whether positively or negatively – in a way that straight kids aren’t influenced. Straight kids get to figure themselves out without their parents worrying about their sexuality from a young age.

I don’t know. It’s a tricky issue, and I think that, as far as things go, this book did a good job putting together a personal story and a history of bullying and gay-rights politics. I just wish, in a way, that with a title like Oddly Normal, there wouldn’t have been all this “my son is different because he acts like a gay stereotype” bit.

Performance: Book was read by the author, which is what I would have suspected (I looked this up afterwards). Also, there was a chapter read by the son, which was kind of nice. I knew there had been a different reader, but I hadn’t realized that Joseph himself had read. Ironically, while Dad did a great job reading – I suppose he could very easily hear the inflections in his own writing – Joseph sounded a bit nervous and stilted. Ah well. It was only one chapter. Overall, the performance was engaging.

Posted in 2013, Adult, Prose | Tagged audio, LGBTQIA, nonfiction, psychology | Leave a comment

City of Lost Dreams, by Magnus Flyte

Posted on November 27, 2013 by Thistle

Spoilers.

The adventures continue for Sarah et al, as they search out a cure for Pollina’s illness, and Nico searches out some way to end his immortality. The book takes place mostly in Vienna this time, but with forays into Prague as well.

I was sad to learn that Sarah and Max had broken up prior to this book beginning. Boo. That made for a much less sexually-interesting book, to be honest. There were a few good encounters, but there wasn’t the tension that existed in the first book. The book also didn’t have the giant cast of characters, or the general zaniness of City of Dark Magic. It was a bit more subdued in general.

However, it was still a fun book, and after the slump of books I’ve read this November, it was great to dive back into a world I knew I would enjoy. It was good to see some familiar characters, though I do wish I’d gotten to spend more time with them, and interesting to meet new ones (again, wish I had more time, especially with Nina!). I’m hoping the next book will get back to the level of the first, but I definitely plan on reading it.

Middle book syndrome. It happens.

Posted in 2013, Adult, Prose | Tagged humor, speculative | Leave a comment